Comments for A Strange Way To Finally Get SP3 To Install

Thank you for your contribution. Issues such as the one you described are frustrating, especially when they keep on happening time and time again.

I'm, pleased to hear the VistaHeads Forum helped to resolve your issue. It appears to be a common one even though I haven't experienced it myself personally.

As the Svchost.exe is the culprit here I though I would share some information about this process/executable.

Microsoft's definition of Svchost.exe is a generic host process name for Services that run from dynamic-link libraries.

What this means is Microsoft changed their approach for launching Windows Services (e.g. Windows Audio for sound, and Windows Update) from Executables (EXE) to Dynamic-Link Libraries (DLL Files).

However, files with a DLL extension cannot be launched. to get around this, the executable scvhost.exe was created to load up Windows Services.

A single instance of scvhosts.exe in Task Manager could be running one or several Windows Services. In some cases I have seen a single scvhost.exe running over 14 Services!

With this in mind I can understand why ending the scvhost.exe instances would enable the Windows XP Service Pack 3 installation process to continue.

What you are effectively doing is batch disabling Windows Services. It appears one or several of those Services was causing a conflict and preventing SP3 from installing.

Process Explorer (Part of the Sysinternals Suite) is an easy way to see which Services each scvhost.exe is running.

Each Service is identified by a logical name, rather than its file name, so it makes sense to you.

Process Explorer also shows lots of other detailed technical information. It is usually for advanced computer technicians only who use it to do things like diagnose and fix DLL version conflicts or computer resource hogs.

However, it is freely available from the Microsoft Website so if you are interested simply search for and downloaded the utility.

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